Fasser Family Holiday Letter 2014

The shortest day of the year and the longest night. How perfect that it is finally the moment that I have a minute to write. Mostly because this year has been the busiest, most wonderful ever! I also had the most amazing afternoon with my friend Nancy seeing a show on Capitol Hill only to come home to watch the Seahawks win easily over the Arizona Cardinals, now dubbed the “angry birds” in our household. Short day but a great one indeed.

2014 started off as best it could. We left Seattle on December 26th to drive down to Lake Tahoe. It’s a place so dear to me and it was the first time Scott got to see it. It wasn’t as snowy as it should be. Skiing at 9000 ft. on man-made snow was totally weird but the lake always lying below is majestic and beautiful as ever. What made it even more special is to have my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin (Ron, Jill & Claire) join us for a long weekend. It was a great way to start off the year!

To suggest that 2014 has flown by is such a cliché but Lord is it true! One indication of that, our Christmas card has a major typo! Turns out Lindsay is actually 17, not 16. Ooops. How did that happen? She is a senior at Ballard High School. She is a great student and is enjoying her post as Student Body President. She is also involved in SLAM (Students Lives Always Matter) a suicide prevention club, LINK CREW (welcome committee) and she continues to enjoy her involvement in Unified Sports and acting as a TA in the Special Ed department. This has been a great year for Linz and she has submitted her application for early acceptance and University of San Francisco. Graduation is June 12th and we are super excited that Lindsay will deliver the commencement speech to her class.

Jackson is just awesome! His soccer team just finished their last game yesterday (thank God). They made it all the way to the finals and they just ran out of time! Their second place win was well deserved. The Knocknoodles are a heck of a team and Jackson has really enjoyed playing defense for them. His latest passion is Parkour. Specifically Free Running, which is a fabulous combo of gymnastics, climbing, and running in an urban environment. It is super cool and we will hopefully have some videos posted on the website for you to enjoy. He’s equally passionate about snowboarding and thank goodness, the forecast looks like he will get some boarding in over the holidays. He continues to be a great student at Hamilton Middle School and looks forward to playing Lacrosse in the spring. He also continues his involvement in Scouts. He earned his second class rand and has committed to doing a 50-mile hike this sumer, which will count toward his Eagle Scout rank.

We are so proud of both the kids. They are healthy and happy people with a fabulous sense of humor! We are lucky parents for sure.

Scott’s still at Hacker Group and he loves it. He continues to enjoy that he is a huge part of the digital growth in the company. It is so fortunate that his expertise has made him such a valuable individual to companies moving to a digital marketing strategy. Scott also just finished his first quarter of teacher for the University of Washington’s Continuing Education program as an instructor for Digital Marketing Analytics. He had 31 students signed up for the course, which just ended last week, and he absolutely loved it. It was a very rich experience for him.

As for me, I’m actually working on a pretty regular basis as of this fall. I’ve never had weekly clients before and they came to me when their regular person left the country for a year. The 3 of them could not be more different and each one of them has changed my life in the most wonderful way. I could have never imagined in a million years how much I would enjoy them and how much they would mean to me. It’s a big change, as I haven’t worked every day in 17 years! But I do like it. A lot. I’ve learned more about my self and I think it’s actually been good for the family. I get a LOT more help now! I’m super happy.

We continue to spend loads of time in Mazama, our heaven on earth and we leave on the 23rd (in two days!) to spend our Christmas holiday and New Years there (in a rented house). Our little cabin will be sitting empty this winter as it’s getting a kitchen make over thanks to some failing plumbing that has actually been an issue for a while. It was decided this Labor Day that we needed to deal with the plumbing issues. We are super excited about the project and will look forward to being at the cabin again later this spring.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and an extremely Happy New Year.

Lindsay

Lindsay is a junior at University of San Francisco majoring in Peace & Conflict Studies and Latin American Studies. She is back from her study abroad in South America and back in the groove at school.

Jackson

Jackson is a sophmore at Ballard High School and is loving Parkour/Free Running, Boy Scouts and hanging with his friends. He traveled to Ecuador with the Boy Scouts and hiked to the top of Mt. Whitney with his buddy Aldo and his dad.

Scott

Scott is driving digital capabilities and programs for Hacker Agency and loving it. He is also teaching Digital Marketing at the University of Washington at both the MBA Program and Professional Certification Extension.

Michelle

Michelle continues to be awesome in all she does with keeping our family on track and working with organization clients.